NUKE LAB CONTRACT: AMNESIA ATTACK

Imagine, for a moment, that you had held your job for the last sixty years. And then the boss wanted you to re-​​apply for your job, all over again. But your past per­for­mance over the decades that would barely count, when you filled out the appli­ca­tion.
You’d call that kind of a mixed, mes­sage, right? But it’s exactly what the Energy Department did yes­ter­day, when it began to put the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s con­tract up for bid, for the first time ever.
Since the days of Oppenheimer, the country’s pre­mier nuclear lab has been run solely by the University of California. But after a seemingly-​​endless series of scan­dals, secu­rity breaches, and finan­cial shenani­gans, the Department of Energy finally decided it might be a good idea to let other uni­ver­si­ties and com­pa­nies com­pete for the multi-​​billion con­tract, too.
But in its draft request for pro­posal, issued Wednesday, the Energy Department made it clear that Los Alamos’ recent past the miss­ing secrets, the injured employ­ees, the cen­sored whis­te­blow­ers, the mil­lions pil­fered from gov­ern­ment accounts didn’t mat­ter a whole lot. Proposals will be judged on eight, point-​​scored cri­te­ria that will add up to 1,000 points, the Associated Press notes. Science and tech­nol­ogy will get 325 points, lab oper­a­tions, 175; key per­son­nel, 150. But, accord­ing to the Albuquerque Journal, “past per­for­mance, going back five years, will account for only 75 points on the scale.“
Sounds like a stacked deck to me.
THERE’S MORE: Tongue buried deep, deep in cheek, the lefty lab crit­ics of Nuclear Watch of New Mexico have declared their inten­tion to bid for con­trol of Los Alamos.

December 2nd, 2004 | Los Alamos and Labs | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.